It Was Circumstantial, Being In This Place at This Time With You
by Zagzagael
Summary: For HGRHfan35, who prompted with "sometimes I think about what would have happened if she met Chibs before reconnecting with Jax." Tara's father is dying, she returns to Charming for his death.


**I LOVE writing to prompts - the more detailed the better! If you know the kind of fic I write and you have a great or complex or cracky or whatever-idea that you would like to read in fic format - prompt me in the comments, or private message me, and I'll see what I can do! **

* * *

It was different, being on the other end of the phone, the country, the experience of life and death. It was mid-morning and she was standing in the locker room of Chicago's Northwestern Memorial, stripping bloody scrubs off. Asleep on her feet, with her cellular phone up to her ear she listened to the calm voice of a social worker from St. Thomas Hospital in Charming, California informing her that it was about her father and please return the call as soon as possible. Thank you. Thank you? She sat down on the bench, partially undressed, and thought about her father in a hospital bed in the small town she grew up in. She knew that he would be dying, cirrhosis of the liver. Instead of remembering the first nineteen years of her life, she closed her eyes and thought of the homeless alcoholic who had been brought into the ER the weekend before, vomiting green bile and bleeding gouts of black blood from both nostrils, drifting with opened eyes into the coma from which he would never awake. At least her father had not been living in a cardboard box under a bridge, and yet, she paused feeling through the emotions for the truth, he had never had a home.

She returned the call, became the family member, talked with Human Resources at Northwestern and booked a bereavement flight. Her father was still alive but he had been dead to her for a decade's time. It wasn't until she landed in Oakland and picked up her voicemails that she considered Josh. The FBI agent had left several increasingly terse messages about her flight and their third date, now broken. She wondered briefly how he had known she had flown home, but then forgot about it as she began enacting her role in the final scenes of her father's life.

* * *

It was impossible, being in the town she had grown up in, and fled from as though fleeing from a raging fire. Or flood. A tornado on her heels, an earthquake beneath her feet. It was the middle of the night and she was standing in the ICU of Charming's St. Thomas Hospital, beside the bed of her comatose father. She had arrived before he left, but he would be gone before the sun rose and painted the town in the colors of a new day. A nurse brought her a chair and she sat vigil. She held his hand and tried to think of him as her father and not a patient. The sterility and familiarity of the hospital setting comforted her and kept her safe from all the monsters still lurking beneath the bed of her ruined childhood. He was harmless on his death bed, he could not yell or rage, insult or injure. He was so heart-breakingly pathetic in this pose that she could not remember why she had stayed away for ten years.

Just before dawn, he exhaled softly, the sound of his breathing no longer wet and labored. She was standing beside the priest. He administered the Last Rights and stepped back, giving his soul to the Lord and his passing to her. She stepped forward, beside her father's still form, and used both hands to hold his hand, bring his knuckles up to her lips. She was truly orphaned now.

Outside in the dawning day she remembered that it wasn't just her widowed drunk of a father she had been avoiding all of her adult life. The smells and sounds of the waking town brought her back to a time she had worked so hard to forget. The unnatural disaster. Of her life.

She busied herself with phone calls, making appointments with the morgue, a funeral home, the Catholic Church, the cemetery. And then she finally had to climb into the economy rental and drive the frustratingly familiar streets.

* * *

It was tragic, being the bereaved but not knowing how to grieve. It was early morning and she was sitting in Father O'Connor's office, finalizing the details with him for a small funeral mass, for her devout father. Who had been an alcoholic. And from whom she had been estranged, but this wasn't her confession and she nodded, made notes, and wondered how big a check she would have to write at the funeral home.

She was ushered politely but pointedly out of the office and stood in the hallway. This was the Church she had been baptized in, had her first communion, and her confirmation. She had naively confessed the sin of breaking her virginity with Jackson Teller and the ensuing silence and the staggering penance had been the first of the wedges driven between her and the human representatives of her father's god.

Now she walked with silent footsteps through the narthex and into the nave. She was softly assaulted by memories of herself as a girl. Her unshakeable child faith had been shook with her mother's death but the Church had shored her back up until Jax, until her rebellious years, until her discovery of love and the physicality of love. The temptation of wrenching oneself away. She stood looking down the middle aisle, up to the altar, breathing through the moment, then the next, and the one after that. She was exhausted, the short nap she had taken on the plane the evening before was a distant definition of sleep. But something was calling her to sit for a while.

There was a dark-haired man kneeling in the last pew, his shoulders slumped in supplication.

She genuflected, crossing herself, and sat down across the aisle from this other solitary penitent. She had no idea what she was going to offer up as prayer, but she knelt and lowered her forehead down to the back of the pew in front of her.

* * *

It was remarkable, being on his knees in a Church, so far from his mother tongues and lands, to be asking for an answer, a portent, only to have a raven-haired beauty make the sign of the cross and slide into a pew as though she were some sort of divine riposte. He tipped his head, watching her from the corners of his eyes. She was certainly not one of the regular parishioners. He'd attended enough masses to know it was a Latino congregation on Saturday evenings and a Vietnamese parish on Sunday mornings. She had the look of Irish American about her and he recognized her posture of familiar discomfiture. It was his own body's response to the Church. He rose and settled back into the pew, interrupted from his religious reveries.

Although it should not have come as such a startling surprise given the fact of a young woman praying alone in the empty morning time, she began to sob and he was taken aback. Her shoulders were shaking, she had buried her face in her hands, and her spine was bending brutally beneath the weight of whatever she was bearing. He held his breath, turned now completely towards her, watching her dissolve. He felt the earth rock beneath him and he stood, hands hanging helpless at his sides. She was oblivious to anything but the wracking of her own body. She was down on her knees, crying audibly, and the sound worked its evolutionary wonder upon him as he felt his heart open to her. With long purposeful strides, he moved across the wide aisle and settled himself beside her.

"There, there, lass," he said softly.

She took a quick momentary glance at him, probably to identify him as Fr. O'Connor who he decidedly was not. She seemed to recognize this indisputable fact and acknowledged him with a nod.

He settled his hand on her shoulder and felt her stiffen beneath his palm, the crying hitched and he realized he might have overstepped.

"It'll be alright, aye? Everything's gonna be alright." He had no idea where this sentiment had arisen, but it was tripping over his tongue and out his mouth and she seemed to respond to his voice, the words, the warmth of his flesh.

She nodded again and he gripped the ball of her shoulder with an overwhelming desire to offer comfort. With no warning other than the human need to be held, she turned her body towards his, she went up off her knees and offered herself to his arms and he opened them for her. She leaned into his chest, pressing her face against the cloth of his shirt and he could feel the sadness washing through her. She was very thin, solid muscles tying her bones together, a feminine form complementing and completing the male shape of his body. He tightened his arms around her, gently pulling her more comfortably into his lap, and with one hand fast around her, he brushed at her hair with the other.

He continued to offer soft words of encouragement. Her grieving was rhythmic and he rocked with her slowly.

After long minutes, it was apparent that she was content to drain her despair in his arms, and he closed his eyes, assured in his creed.

* * *

It was incomprehensible, being held by a stranger while her heart finally broke. The dam of impenetrable years washed away by a torrent of grief so impossible, so deep, so full of deadfall that it was dangerous. It was long minutes of grief, and she would have thought herself inconsolable and yet she was being consoled. Her initial reaction was to pull away, run away. But something about his hand on her shoulder, his voice, his words, and finally his arms around her felt incredibly safe. He was offering to pull her free of the raging waters. She allowed her body to fold against him, and she accepted his offer to hold her while she wept.

Finally, the tears were gone, although she could feel the aquifer of sadness filling inside her again. It was an endless well. She straightened and he let her go. She wiped at her eyes with her fingers, looking at him from beneath her lashes. She was surprised to see the guise her angel had arrived in. He was older than she was, rough and rugged and hard. But his eyes were soft and concerned, his mouth kind in a face that someone else had not been kind to. Goateed and scarred, grey-black hair falling boyishly over his forehead.

"I'm so sorry. Thank you," she whispered.

He shook off both apology and gratitude graciously and rolled his head on his shoulders. "You wanta go outside, get tha' fresh air?"

She smiled. They stood and sidled out of the pew. He turned to the sanctuary and genuflected, waited while she did the same, then they walked together out into the sunshine.

Outside on the wide cement steps, she tipped her head up towards the sun, letting the impossible California day dry her skin, heal her. She could feel him watching her and she felt the warmth of his particular sun heat her from the inside out. She looked over at him shyly. In the bright daylight his demeanor become obvious. He was unmistakably an outlaw. She felt her heart sink slightly below her own waterline once again, and with a turning away of her face she spied the blacked-out Harley parked up against the curb halfway down the block. She shook her head.

He was, of course, oblivious to her dark realizations and was occupied lipping a cigarette out of a pack of American Spirits. He offered her one and she surprised herself by accepting. He bent to her and cupped his hands around his lighter and she puffed the cigarette to glowing ember. She stepped off the Church steps onto the sidewalk and moved towards the bike. He followed, then stepped up beside her. He smelled of leather and slightly soured mash and gear oil.

"I'm," he hesitated, looking far down the quiet suburban street, "Filip."

"Tara," she answered him, her smile genuine. Something about this man was speaking to her heart in its secret language. It was gloriously mysterious.

"Nice ta meet ya, Tara. You in a bad way?" he asked and she recognized the immediate regret on his features. He felt he had stumbled into assumption.

"Um, no. No! I mean, yes. My father died this morning." She mentally shook herself and her spine tremored.

His expression grew sad. "Terrible. I'm sorry to hear it."

She nodded her head sideways, smoking and watching him through slightly narrowed eyes. "He drank himself to death."

"Doesn't make it any less terrible, aye?"

She blushed. "No. It doesn't." She sighed, smoke tendriling out of her mouth. She grimaced and ground the cigarette out beneath her shoe. She walked to the grass beside the sidewalk and lowered herself definitively to a seated position. "I am so tired."

"Aye?" he asked, hunkering down beside her, booted feet planted firmly on the cement.

She closed her eyes. When she opened them, he was looking at her with such an intent and open expression of interest and longing that she began to talk, telling him everything about the past twenty-four hours, starting with phone call the morning before in Chicago all the way across the country. She spoke of familial mortality, the fact that this was her childhood parish church, her estranged father and the motherless child she had been. None of it made very much sense, dislocated and discombobulated. But he seemed comfortable in his squatting, wrists on his thighs, hands dangling between his knees, listening. And she slowly stopped talking, studying the square-tipped fingers, the masculine brushing of black hair over the backs of his hands and up the strong forearms, tattooed and ropy with muscle, setting to memory the precision of his metacarpals, ulna and radius.

* * *

It was staggering, being drawn to another human creature, a stranger, an unknown element, with such strong desire and interest. He was overwhelmed, by her, by his reactions to her, mental, physical, and emotional. All understandable but it was the visceral sensitivity that was surprising him most. He was completely desirous to protect this girl-woman. She had an air of threatened destiny about her and he could feel his back strengthening as though he were donning armor and hefting a long sword in her name. He could not breathe through it, dissipate it, turn away from the calling of his name.

He listened to her small secret strange story. It was as though she were reciting a love letter to him, revealing intimacies they had shared in another life. He smiled, too broadly, it startled her, and he covered his mouth with a fist and coughed. He stood and held his hand out to her. She reached up for it and he helped her to her feet. He wanted to pull her back into his arms and had to take a step away from her to prevent his body betraying his better sense.

He was yearning to feed her, to soothe her, wash her clean, tuck her into bed, and stand fierce guard over her.

"Ye have quite a list of things that need doin'."

Her eyes widened at the thought and she agreed.

"Lemme help you." He held up his hand and ticked off each one of his fingers in turn. "Funeral home. Vigil. Morning mass. Graveside. The legal closing down of your da's property. And you're back on a plane home."

"This is my home," she admitted. "It was. I guess it always will be. But yes, that's everything I need to do." She sighed. "I really need to sleep or find a way not to."

He used his knuckle to push his cheek between his teeth, chewing thoughtfully while studying her face. "There's tha'." He looked away. "If you want my help, and I am sincerely offering it to ye, all of it is possible."

"We don't even know each other."

"Truer words."

"I might as well deal with the funeral details right now."

"Breakfast first?"

"I'm ravenous. But food second. I need to do this now."

"Right then. I know a place, real food."

"Are you going to follow me?"

He squinted at her. "D'ye ride?"

* * *

It was exhilarating, being on the back of a motorcycle again. She had decided to give herself over to the bewildering turn of events. Heart-pounding into her sternum, making it painful to breathe, long thigh muscles quivering. She took his hand and climbed on behind him. He jumped on the starter pedal, banked out into the street, and she forgot the rental car, her dead father lying on steel, the priest who surely remembered her last confession, the FBI agent determined to bed her, her own miserably empty life. And she became the moment and this man was in that moment with her and that in itself was something that had nothing to do with the past or the future or even the present. They were out of any ordinary perception of time. And they were occupying an extraordinary time together.

She had fled Charming for myriad reasons, and the top of the seemingly endless rationales was to stop riding motorcycles with boys. Or boy. Who surely would be a man now and strange how she had thought of him only, up until the moment she wrapped her arms around this man, as a boy. _The boy who. _Followed by all the messy and amazing verbs. _Pursued her, was pursued by her, took her to bed, taught her how to climb the delirious sexual staircase, kissed her senseless, begged her to stay, cheated on her, drank with her, smoked with her, dropped acid with her, cursed at her when she told him she was leaving, then cried and tried to follow her so she had to sneak away in the bright part of the day while he slept off the crazy part of the night._ She shook her head, flat-palming Filip's belly, and pressed herself entirely against him, felt him inhale sharply with the motion and smiled into the sweet sweat smell of his t-shirt, feeling the knobs of his spine tantalizing her lips.

At the funeral home, he seemed to be ready to wait for her outside, but she told him to come with her. Silently acknowledged that they had stepped into a hitherto empty space that was now filled with their two bodies devoid of all expectation. He shrugged and she saw the corners of his lips twitch upward beneath the long hairs of his moustache. She liked his face. Very much.

It was a slow week for the dead in Charming and the funeral parlor could accommodate her tight schedule. The Vigil would be the following night, the graveside service the morning after, proceeding the Mass. She could use all of the next day to put her father's affairs in order, fly out immediately after her his body was lowered into the ground. She signed her name on seemingly endless lines.

There was a bad moment when the somber salesman was showing her caskets. She reached out to stroke the satin smoothness of a dark mahogany coffin, touch the exquisite lining, when her hand began to shake so violently that she looked at it as though it belonged to someone else's arm. Some other dead father's daughter. Quickly, he was there, a hand under her elbow, walking her away from the thought of hermetic seals and back into the moment.

Things had become a whirlwind but the man beside her had offered himself as the eye of the storm and each time she looked at him or stepped into his space, the roaring of the winds died down and the danger of being sucked into a bleak vortex disappeared.

Breakfast became lunch, on the river, a dilapidated bar and grill. She had no recollection of it from her life before but it had obviously been part of Charming since time immemorial. Fish and chips and beer. He told her stories about Irish wakes, the history and mythology of the practice. He waxed poetic about covering mirrors, and clearing dining room tables, and drinking toasts to the dead until you wished you were dead yourself. He told her it was a celebration of life and she had to admit to him how very little keening and crying she would be doing over her father's corpse.

Quietly, he offered to procure her a line or two of crank. She bit her lower lip considering it, the mad rush of it, the immediacy of the world becoming sharp angles and brittle glass. But she knew she had to sleep and was already punching delirious, forcing herself to chemically stay awake with this man would be a bender she would not return from. Would not want to come back from. She could feel the lure of the road, the call of the night hours, the stars that wanted to be watched, the flesh that wanted to be touched. She shook her head thank you no.

* * *

It was out of character, being in her father's house with this unknown man. It was late-afternoon and she was standing in the destruction of her father's existence. The house was something from a life she had not realized he had been living. It diminished her.

They had gone back to the Church to retrieve the rental car. She had told him, simply, to follow her if he wanted. She knew he wanted. She wanted something, as well, but was struggling to explain it to herself, or recognize it, to accept it. It was more than a physical desire. It was the feeling of absence needing to be filled.

He was standing slightly behind her and she turned to him, her face stricken and he tipped his head at an angle that was a beckoning. He began to lift his arms, and she cleaved to him.

* * *

It was unprecedented, being utterly consumed by this woman. He had, of course, his share of one-night stands, rushed couplings in bar bathrooms, blowjobs in darkened parking lots. This was not that. He had no idea who she was and yet he felt he had known her for all the years had had been alive and all the aeons he had not. His heart was resonating, the actual organ itself proving a law of physics, oscillating with greater and greater amplitude at her frequency. He could feel the blood in his veins vibrating, could feel his entire being forced into the same motion of her body.

She had taken him into her arms, responded to his embrace. As though a clock had been set, the triggering of an explosion, they became frantic with one another's bodies. She pulled him to the floor and he followed her down. There was no pretense of hesitation. She wanted what he wanted. He wanted what she wanted.

With great heaving breaths and complete trust, she guided him inside her body and he found her mouth with his. She had her hands fast on his hips and he had his hands cupping her face. He did not want to close his eyes. He forgot that time moves forward, he felt his mind shiver and all the clocks in all the world stop. Everything fell away from them, the floor, the dismal house, the dinkwater town, the MC, her existence in a faraway city, the trees, the clouds, the sky, the setting sun.

She was talking to him and he did not understand the words she was speaking. He kissed her and swallowed every one and then he knew what it was she was telling him. He covered her ears with his hands, rendered her deaf, she reached up and did the same to him. They locked their gazes on each other, and he kissed her until he saw her eyes slide closed. She arched her back and he buried his face into her throat. He found her carotid artery with his sensitive lips, her heart beating against the broad expanse of his tongue.

After the fierce coupling, his arms around her, his head on her shoulder, he felt her give in to sleep. He rolled partially onto his side and she curled herself against him. Time started once more. All the timepieces in the entire world ticking towards the moment she would leave. And they would be parted by the cutting blade of reality, separate lives, uncommonalities, responsibilities, promises and lies.

He could feel the knife point in his heart.


End file.
